President's Letter

This year has been an incredible one for the Ad Council—and I’m looking forward to a productive and impactful 2015. As we plan for the future, it’s clear that our organization is at an important inflection point. Today, new technologies, social platforms and digital innovations have given us more ways to engage people around the issues that they’re passionate about.

More than ever before, people want to get involved and be heard. When we consider how social activism is a religion for millennials and how society expects corporations to be socially responsible, it’s clear that we have a great opportunity to connect with people, to motivate them, and to change behaviors and social norms. That’s why we’ll continue to work with the nation’s top agencies and use digital advances to amplify important issues including public health, education, community involvement and the environment.

We’re proud of the meaningful conversations that the Ad Council has helped foster over the past year, including a campaign encouraging safe gun storage, one that tackled learning and attention issues in children and new campaigns that helped audiences understand healthcare coverage plans under the Affordable Care Act and urged them to Go Red for Women in support of heart health.

Other campaigns celebrated milestones in 2014, like the 10 year anniversary of our “You Don’t Have to Be Perfect to be a Perfect Parent” adoption from foster care campaign which has helped more than 23,000 kids in the foster care system find a forever family and the 70th birthday of our beloved Smokey Bear on August 9.

The Ad Council has achieved much during it’s more than seven decades of service, but there has never been a more exciting time for social causes and we need your support. We will continue to count on the generous commitment of our dedicated media, corporate and agency partners as we look to the future and inspire social change in the next year and beyond.